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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   3620 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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What is the Zionist model of antisemitism*?

Matt Yglesias posted what turned out to be a surprisingly hot take that the downturn in public opinion of Israel is a result of Israeli actions, and that the best way for Israel to fix its public relations problem is to change its actions vis-a-vis the Palestinian issue and foreign policy.

I was surprised at the pushback. This seems straightforwardly true. There was a great chart I saw a few days ago, which I am unfortunately unable to find, which showed that public opinion of Israel has been approximately this low before. It was in 1982 with the invasion of Lebanon and the notoriously brutal siege of Beirut.

Most of the alternative theories fell into two camps.

  1. Antisemitism is a result of massive, society-wide misinformation perpetuated by the press, universities, and social media. This is the “wall of dead children” model. Israel’s actions don’t really matter because they will be twisted and misrepresented anyways. The solution is to exert more control over the information environment.
  2. Antisemitism is an intrinsic force of nature. It doesn’t have a cause, or if it does, it has a cause which cannot be effectively operated upon. Asking what causes antisemitism is like asking what causes DeCarlos Brown to stab people on the subway. The way to deal with antisemitism is to kill, deport, or disenfranchise antisemites.

It’s hard to tell how religious the people in 2. are, but my general impression is, “quite a bit”. Many of them seem to speak of antisemitism as if it were a spiritual fault, another manifestation of the platonic ideal of pure evil. Seen as a spiritual problem, the correct response is to become even more aggressively Jewish. This has the rather large problem of being counterproductive when, e.g. smashing idols goes wrong.

*By “antisemitism” in this post I almost exclusively mean “antizionism”. I use the term to maintain consistency with the pro-Israel literature I am engaging with, not as an endorsement that antizionism = antisemitism.

You're being overly systematic, here- 'antisemitism' in Zionist parlance is a snarl word. There are uses of the term which have a definition, sure, but not the Zionist one. They're not worried about the cause. They're worried about using it as a cudgel against critics. And as long as this lines up with somebody else's interests in the west, it will.

You don’t think they use the term “antisemitism” amongst themselves to describe (what they think is) a real concept?

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